Knight Dairy lost $5.8M on futures — then the CSRC fined it for hiding the loss

Knight Dairy (stock code 832786.BJ) is a Beijing Stock Exchange-listed dairy company based in Inner Mongolia, specialising in cow breeding, fresh milk production, and dairy processing. The company was one of the few dairy producers listed on the BSE.

In 2024, Knight Dairy began trading commodity futures — soybean meal, sugar, and urea contracts. The trading was speculative rather than hedging: the company had no natural exposure to sugar or urea prices. Losses accumulated rapidly. By 17 January 2024, cumulative losses reached 9 million yuan. By 13 August 2024, losses had grown to 38.7 million yuan, with a peak loss of 41.67 million yuan ($5.8 million) — equivalent to 41% of 2023 net profit.

The company failed to disclose the mounting losses to the stock exchange or investors, violating China's securities disclosure rules. In April 2025, the Beijing Stock Exchange issued a public reprimand for an inaccurate earnings forecast. On 4 July 2025, the CSRC opened a formal investigation and the Inner Mongolia Securities Regulatory Bureau issued a penalty notice: Knight Dairy was fined 2 million yuan, chairman Dang Yongtao was fined 800,000 yuan, CFO Wang Xilin was fined 400,000 yuan, and board secretary Chen Yong was fined 200,000 yuan.

The case became a textbook example of how speculative futures trading by a non-financial company can compound a trading loss with a regulatory penalty. Knight Dairy had no business trading sugar or urea futures — the trades were pure speculation dressed as risk management, and the failure to disclose turned a bad trade into a securities law violation.